c. 1997 Religion News Service

YONKERS, N.Y. _ In a neighborhood whose commanding view of the Hudson River adds natural beauty to an otherwise glum array of boarded buildings and littered streets, a new, American-style Buddhism is blossoming, fed by the bitterness of inner-city grit and the sweetness of chocolate brownies.

It’s a Buddhism based on the hybrid vision of Roshi Bernard Tetsugen Glassman, a Brooklyn-born Zen dynamo who combines the life of the spirit with the life of the streets. For Glassman _ who leads Zen communities in New York and Los Angeles _ individual enlightenment and societal well-being are inseparable.

Glassman is both a high-ranking Zen priest and an entrepreneur whose Greystone Bakery produces the key ingredient in Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream. The bakery’s profits sparked the growth of the Greystone Foundation, Glassman’s burgeoning network of institutions providing apartments, jobs, community gardens, day care and medical assistance to AIDS sufferers, street people, ex-drug addicts, single mothers and others facing tough times in Yonkers.

His goal is to make the dependent self-sufficient by offering comprehensive services that elevate the spirit while providing basic material needs.”My understanding of Zen is it’s just a state of mind,”said Glassman, sitting cross-legged on a couch in one of several Greystone properties within blocks of each other in southwest Yonkers, a city of 200,000 nestled on the Hudson’s eastern bank immediately north of New York.”Zen is a way of living life in a non-dualistic manner; having a moment-to-moment sense that whatever you’re doing in that moment is the spiritual life,”he added.

Glassman’s approach has been labeled”engaged Buddhism,”a melding of American-style liberal social action with traditional Buddhism’s emphasis on compassionate living and the interconnectedness of creation.

Glassman is not the only prominent U.S. Buddhist leader to mix social action with individual spiritual growth. Indeed, many Americans attracted to Buddhism in recent years have a history of 1960s-style social and political involvement. Leading foreign Buddhists _ including Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama of Tibet _ have also emphasized this approach.

What sets apart Glassman _ one of the most senior Zen teachers in the United States _ is the degree to which he has made activism the organizing principle of his primary spiritual home, the Yonkers-based Peacemaker Order. (He also jets monthly to California, where for the past two years he has been the interim abbott of the Zen Center of Los Angeles, one of the nation’s oldest Zen communities).”Bernie got tired of just sitting in a room and meditating,”said Lama Surya Das, a leading American convert to Tibetan-style Buddhism who lives outside Boston.”He understood the need to reach out to those in pain, of fully embracing the world no matter how crazy it appears. He knows it’s not enough to contemplate your navel.” Glassman’s newest undertaking is his fledgling Peacemaker Order, successor to the Zen Community of New York, which he established in 1979. He calls the order the”container”for training Buddhist priests and others to follow in his footsteps. Eventually, Glassman hopes to establish a network of”peacemaker villages”around the world in areas of conflict and societal instability.

Another embryonic project is his”House of One People,”an attempt to create interfaith”exchanges”Glassman hopes will eventually produce an interfaith seminary teaching”peacemaking”from a variety of religious perspectives.”I would call this the work of Buddhism, but it’s also the work of many religions; making things whole,”said the 58-year-old Glassman, a soft-spoken man with thinning hair, an ample belly and a self-described stubborn streak.”He’s a pathmaker,”the Rev. James Parks Morton, retired dean of New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, said of Glassman.”He’s very bold and very inclusive,”added Morton, who is collaborating with Glassman on the”House of One People”project.

Glassman _ who comes from a politically left, religiously traditional New York Jewish background _ first became involved with Zen Buddhism while a student at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, where he earned an aeronautical engineering degree.

He lived on an Israeli kibbutz and worked for McDonnell-Douglas in Los Angeles before becoming a monk in the Soto Zen tradition in 1970. Six years later, he quit his job to devote himself full time to Zen practice. Three years after that, he returned to New York to start a Zen community with his first wife and a few students.

From the beginning, Glassman said, he envisioned a Zen community that addressed a full-range of human needs, one that integrated economic viability with spirituality and social activism. “I wanted to reach a larger group of people than just those who visit a Buddhist temple or are attracted to `zazen’ (traditional Zen sitting meditation),”said Glassman.”My vision was to reach people from all walks of life, from every social class. I did not want to limit myself by just being a `Zen’ teacher. I’ve been working on this blueprint for 20 years.” The first step toward realizing his goal was starting Greystone Bakery, named after a building in which the community once lived.

The bakery _ which also sells gourmet cakes and tarts using natural and organic ingredients _ began in 1982 as a means of livelihood for Zen Community of New York monks. However, before long it became the cornerstone of the Greystone Foundation, the network of not-for-profit and for-profit agencies Glassman established to realize his activist goals. Greystone’s annual operating budget stands at $5.2 million.

Richard Halevy, director of public affairs for the city of Yonkers, called Greystone”a fine example of a non-government entity becoming a partner in the community and providing the community with what it is not adequately receiving any other way.” While the bakery employs about 50 people and turns a handsome profit _ annual sales total about $3 million _ Greystone Foundation needs long ago outstripped what seed money cakes and brownies could provide.

For example, the foundation is currently spending $10 million to turn a former Roman Catholic monastery in Yonkers into 35 one-room apartments for homeless HIV and AIDS sufferers. The two-acre site is the first permanent home for poor AIDS patients in Westchester County, a largely affluent, suburban area in which inner-city Yonkers stands out as a poor relation.

Adult and child day-care facilities, a holistic health center and an interfaith chapel are also part of the project.

Federal, state, county and city bonds and grants are largely paying for the project, along with private sector loans and gifts.

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Just blocks from the monastery project, Greystone is spending an additional $3.4 million to turn a formerly derelict structure into 22 apartments for homeless families living on public assistance, adding to 27 previously completed units in adjoining buildings. A day-care center _ primarily for families living in the Greystone Family Inn apartments and charging as little as $2 per child per week _ shares the site.”The goal is to wean (homeless people) away from needing help and making them self-sufficient,”said Carol Gerstein, Greystone’s director of development and community relations.”We provide job counseling and job training. We’ll get them jobs at the bakery or at Pamsula (a new Greystone business that recycles used fabric remnants into hand-stitched clothing, quilts and other items). We’re also tied in with other community agencies, so what we can’t provide we send them elsewhere for.” Glassman _ who also leads”bearing witness”meditation retreats in such unlikely places as the Bowery, New York’s infamous skid row, and the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz _ is slowly disengaging himself from Greystone’s day-to-day operations, turning those duties over to professional managers like Gerstein.

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Unlike its early days, most members of Greystone’s current staff _ each of whom gets $300 per semester for schooling _ are not Buddhists. And many who are Buddhist identify with a form of the religion other than Zen. At Greystone, Zen Buddhism, rather than being an overt presence, has become more a subtle working philosophy.”Religion-wise, they’re not trying to do anything here,”said non-Buddhist Gary Nash, a self-described former”bad-attitude case”who was living in a homeless shelter when Greystone Bakery gave him a job seven years ago. Today, he’s the quality assurance manager.”It’s more a feeling about daily living, being responsible and treating others good that you pick up here,”he said.

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That approach has prompted some grumbling in Buddhist circles that Glassman _ whose Japanese title”roshi”translates as”venerable teacher”_ has subordinated his responsibility as a spiritual leader to his zeal for social activism.

Havanpola Ratansara, the Los Angeles-based executive president of the American Buddhist Congress, a national body encompassing nine Buddhist traditions, dismissed such complaints as”the comments of those living in the past.” Buddhism, said Ratansara, a monk who comes from Sri Lanka, has aways adapted itself to the culture of its host country. In contemporary America, Buddhism has an obligation to”not hide in the monastery, but be in the streets.” Glassman simply dismisses such criticism.”Greystone is a community, but we also want people here to think of it as a study path that they’re on … where they begin to raise their own questions about spirituality,”he said.”It would be a mistake to look at what we’ve done at Greystone and call it a success. The end prize … is to create an enlightened society. We haven’t achieved that. … That’s the goal of my teaching.”

MJP END RIFKIN